rae
11mo ago
The rate of passing trans people is not 1 in a million. There’s only a few thousand trans people total where I live, and most of the trans guys I met pass. It would be astronomically unlikely for me to meet and date so many “rounding errors”.
rae
11mo ago
I guess I’m one of those people that sanewashes the transgender movement - I don’t agree with 100% or maybe even 50% of the movement, but I do feel compelled to defend it to some degree because at least it defends my right to be accepted in society and have access to healthcare I need, unlike the current anti-trans conservatives in the US. That’s one of the downsides of the culture, you’re thinking about picking a fight with an ideological monolith and losing all the nuances from discussing individual philosophical differences.
However I feel obligated to point out that you picked a wrong example from the transgender movement; how is sexual dysphoria contradictory with gender being a social construct? You can argue that they’re unrelated, you could feel dysphoric about having the physical characteristics of your biological sex, and you could have gender dysphoria about being treated as a man or a woman in society; the latter would go away in a theoretical society where men and women were treated 100% the same, whereas the former would be present even on a desert island.
If you wanted weak men of the transgender movement, pick the tucutes who believe gender dysphoria isn’t necessary to be trans, that gender presentation isn’t related to gender identity, and that it’s transphobic to be a gay man and not want to pleasure a trans man’s vagina. Those are actual beliefs held by some people in the community and much more contradictory in that they devalue the very concept of gender identity.
rae
1yr ago
Fair point, that was a straw-man. My uncharitable interpretation was perhaps motivated by my own personal experience of being in the >95th percentile of teenage boys and not being able to match my overweight, untrained male classmates despite going to the gym 3x a week and trying to average around 3k calories a day. I didn't feel like my male puberty had given me much competitive advantage when I would get beaten in arm wrestling by random female classmates or the teacher assigned me to play football with the girls in PE, so while I agree that the male/female athleticism distribution is bimodal, overlaps do exist.
rae
1yr ago
I disagree, I couldn’t care less about gender “identity” myself. I have gender dysphoria and the most effective treatment has been to transition. I don’t care about “really” being a woman or not, what matters is, does my body distress me, and do people perceive me in ways that make me uncomfortable? If I look enough like a woman that people assume I am one when they see me, that’s good enough for me.
rae
10mo ago
Smell is the one thing that’s pretty much guaranteed with HRT. Trans women smell like women and trans men definitely smell like men, even “down there”. Skin texture also dramatically changes.
Looking female will depend on this early the transition is and the individual’s baseline. Some will pass as female to the average person but remain “clockable” to people who know what to look for. Some trans women who started off hormones young enough will be indistinguishable, some are lucky to pass after a few surgeries. But we definitely can’t take any random biological adult male and making him fully look like a woman.
Reproduction isn’t there yet, but some results of sexual reassignment surgery are quite visually impressive, others less so (Thai surgeons for instance are known to have better results and use a different technique). For some, it has been enough to fool unsuspecting men before (plenty of reports of trans women going stealth) and it certainly is enough to reduce dysphoria and function as a sexual organ in most cases. However, it is a gamble.
I’d say current technology is good enough to alleviate dysphoria and at the very least there’s no point of delaying taking HRT in the hopes of a better transhumanist future. But if you’re just curious and want a magic gender swap to experience life as the opposite sex for whatever reason, obviously we’re not there yet and the current treatments should absolutely not be taken lightly as some changes are irreversible.
rae
11mo ago
How do you demonstrate that you suffer from gender dysphoria though? I guess it could be accessible to anyone who has transitioned for more than X time. But what’s the real point of having your gender marked on your driver’s license or birth certificate? On the driver’s license it should be obvious from the picture, and if it’s not, what is adding F/M going to do?
Mostly, I’m generally against dividing and discriminating anything by sex - it’s just as discriminatory as dividing by race or other physical characteristics, although I am aware of the impractical reality of removing some gender based discrimination (e.g. prisons). To me, any solution is a compromise until we reach a transhuman utopia where bodies can be changed at will and sex stops mattering. Probably won’t happen in my life time, but advances can still be made in that direction.
rae
11mo ago
Men are also more likely to be abandoned to their fate if they are marginal (see the homelessness rates) and I don't see why I'd give men "privilege" for the ability to cooperate with each other unless I also gave them a malus for being more likely to violently assault one another and attribute the absence of that amongst women to "female privilege".
“Privilege” is a loaded word and I personally don’t like it.
My point is that maleness has intrinsic advantages. So does femaleness. Those advantages may be more or less relevant to you, and it doesn’t mean there aren’t any drawbacks; an advantage in one area does not necessarily nullify a disadvantage in another.
Historically, men’s ability to co-operate in large hierarchical social structures was hugely beneficial, and the aggression was harnessed towards the “enemy”. That competitive streak can still be an advantage today.
In fact, they seem to do the opposite: men's heightened risk of assault and violence and longer prison sentences are the result of "toxic masculinity" (with the not-subtle implication that it is men's fault and issue, unlike problems that impact women) and women are privileged for avoiding it.
Men are generally more aggressive due to testosterone and a culture that perpetuates and encourages male aggression. Women tend to be hyper vigilant about the risks of being assaulted while men are the opposite - I had a lot of guys surprised at how I’m always paranoid walking alone at night or being suspicious of male strangers.
What if I, as a man, want to be a successful kindergarten teacher? A stay-at-home dad?
Women would be more likely to be successful at those, yes. Pros and cons.
And what about all of the benefits that can come from leveraging sexuality? Or just the general "women are wonderful" effect?
As I said, double edged sword. Not everyone is comfortable with leveraging their sexuality and there are risks; some men will blacklist you because you didn’t sleep with them, and sleeping your way to the top is a reputation hazard. Wouldn’t you rather be valued for your skills and abilities rather than your success be based on how much men want to have sex with you? The latter is quite dehumanising.
Some trans people would argue that such a “cure” would fundamentally change who they are as a person, as opposed to say, plopping the same brain in a new body of the opposite sex. It would be akin to having a pill to cure homosexuality when you could instead just accept people for who they are.
I’m somewhat ambivalent about it because going from one sex hormone to the other also changes who you are as a person (I’ve experienced this as someone who went on HRT), and there’s reports of dysphoric biological female teenagers going on testosterone blockers and that significantly reducing their dysphoria to the point they no longer need to transition.
But, given the two options, I would probably go with the perfect transition, because it’s a lot more interesting.
rae
11mo ago
I think the mistake is viewing categories as “real” things that exist outside of your mind. Categories aren’t “real”, they’re a fuzzy concept that humans invented. This doesn’t mean that they’re meaningless; they’re an abstraction through which to compress tons of information about a subject, allowing you to make decisions more effectively. Every category is like this, from species to planets to sandwiches to chairs.
So if you ask is “X a disease”, you should be aware that disease isn’t a thing that objectively exists outside of human interpretation. Most cases are clearcut so this doesn’t matter, but occasionally you do have ambiguities, like sickle cell traits which offer resistance against malaria at the cost of other health complications - it’s a disease in the western world, but in some African countries it can literally save your life.
Surely you know how this game goes? You share non-passing trans people, I can share passing ones. What do you think about 6’3 Mitch Harrison who competed in the Titan Games? Sure not all trans men look like this (but most do eventually pass as short effeminate men), but they are out there - both me and gay men I know have dated trans guys who passed.
I wouldn’t introduce a passing trans woman to a straight man uncritically, because most straight men aren’t interested in trans women and many are downright threatened by the concept, genital preferences are a thing, and the cost-benefit ratio is too low. But, I could gently approach the subject and see if that particular person is interested - I have done so in the past, I’ve had straight friends say “if she’s hot and had bottom surgery, I don’t care”. And what do you think is more likely - that a straight man would be interested in a trans woman that looks like this, or for a trans man that looks like Laith Ashley? Which one do you think confuses gay men, and which one confuses straight men?
Trans women aren’t the exact same as cis women, and I’m happy to accept that. Both the “trans women are exactly the same as cis women” and the “trans women are just men in a dress and we can always tell” camps are wrong.
rae
1yr ago
“Getting a sex change” is also an old timey term for gender reassignment surgery, so I’m seeing more of a general move from sex towards gender when it comes to trans discourse. Definitions are generally fuzzy and shift over time anyway and nature doesn’t care for human’s need to categorise everything into neat little boxes.
Even sex doesn’t have an easy binary scientific definition (how do you categorise intersex individuals?) and so best to precisely detail what you’re saying. I personally think it’d be better to use terms like “chromosomal sex” and “phenotypic sex” - the former you can’t change, the latter you can to some degree. Then you have gender which relates to phenotypic sex but is mostly irrelevant to your chromosomes - we didn’t even know they existed until the late 19th century.
I don’t agree with some of the philosophy behind trans activism but our goals are largely aligned, and obviously I will be more sympathetic to an ideology that supports my existence than one that does not.
Gestures wildly at Europe
In what sense? I live in a European country and transgender HRT, along with many surgeries, are available through the public healthcare system. One of my trans friends got put on blockers and transitioned as a minor. Sure it’s not as easy as the US where you have informed consent, and the public healthcare system has hideous waiting lists (in general), but the medical consensus here is still to treat gender dysphoria with transition.
rae
1yr ago
If an adult is trans but not taking hormones and has no intention of taking any in the future, their trans status is highly questionable unless they have a medical contraindication or live in a hostile environment where transitioning is dangerous.
rae
6mo ago
I’m not sure there’s a difference between how the emotions from how interpret the experience vs. the experience itself? Mental issues are by definition intrinsic. Not all soldiers develop PTSD after experiencing a traumatic event - there seems to be many variables influencing its development, such as age, pre existing conditions, support network, even genes (I’m reading that PTSD is 30-40% heritable). And there’s depressingly large amounts of women that have PTSD from sexual assaults and physical abuse - while only a small minority of men become soldiers in the west.
I’m also not sure what you mean by women’s mental issues being more intrinsic? Anxiety, depression, addiction and abusive relationships would be common reasons the average westerner would go to therapy, and I don’t see how there’s a difference in “cause” there when it comes to gender?
rae
11mo ago
I personally am for giving minors access to gender affirming healthcare if they have gender dysphoria, and I’d say you pass the ideological Turing test as I’m pretty much in agreement with those points. Can I ask why you’re against it?
rae
11mo ago
You made a big leap from left-handedness to missing limb, which is commonly accepted as a disability, and ignored all of the in-between.
What about something like autism spectrum disorders? A mild case of autism can be beneficial; how many technological and scientific advances do we owe to people who had autistic obsessions in engineering, physics, programming, etc.? Some autistic people see “normies” as the dysfunctional ones and are able to be very successful and productive in the right environment - but there’s a point where it becomes entirely a disability. Where do you draw the line?
rae
6mo ago
I don’t understand or see the point of neo-pronouns. If anything I’d prefer if there were no gendered pronouns at all in English, like in Hungarian or Turkish.
Non-binary can have multiple meanings. It could mean having dysphoria, but not enough to make you want to fully transition - plenty of butch lesbians are like that. It could mean preferring an androgynous presentation and not being comfortable with being/looking completely male or female. Some straight people also adopt the label to be trendy.
rae
11mo ago
Yes.
For men who are attracted to femininity, wouldn’t submissiveness, being family-oriented, making the man feel strong by needing his protection, gender roles etc. be the point, not shortcomings?
rae
11mo ago
I like women, real women, that sounds somehow prejudiced or old fashioned but if you believe sex is real then it actually means something.
Sex alone doesn’t govern your attraction. You’re not attracted to ovary ducts or XX chromosomes, you’re attracted to the female phenotype. Otherwise you’d be attracted to the very good looking trans men I linked earlier.
I viscerally would not want to have sex with a man, and especially a man pretending to be a woman. This is just me and is no reflection on the other person.
Getting called a man, especially a “man pretending to be a woman”, is distressing for trans women. That is why many attempt to pass. It’s also a way to avoid the negative attention that being a visibly trans person can bring - many people are hostile towards trans women, but if they see you as a regular woman, you’ll be safer.
Personally, I’m hoping that one day we have the technology to have good enough sex changes that trans women are indistinguishable from cis women including in terms of reproductive capabilities. At that point, would you still say they are men pretending to be women, or would you agree that they are men who have turned into women?
But the body to me is not just a sack of meat, it is the primary link to reality and a failure to accept it seems to me like a failure to truly accept oneself. That probably sounds judgemental but it's how I orient to life.
Why should I accept it when I can change it? The option is literally there, it’s not perfect but it made a noticeable improvement in my life.
If anything, accepting being trans is what took the most courage. I tried to deny it for years, and tried to be something I wasn’t.
Be gay, be a feminine man, be gender non-conforming but why change your body drastically with all the attendant risks,
Believe me, I’ve tried everything else. I couldn’t stand my body before I transitioned, now I can finally stand to look at myself in the mirror. Life is short, and the option not to have a body I despise is literally right there. Why shouldn’t I take it? What’s the upside of being miserable?
Now, I can have real relationships, I can enjoy sex, I can be a lot more intimately fulfilled than I used to be. I’m grateful for all the physical changes I am experiencing, a marked difference from how I dreaded puberty (I may not know what it’s like to be a woman, but I certainly know what it’s like to become more of a man by going through male puberty and male aging, and that was an awful experience).
rae
11mo ago
Bit of a late reply but unfortunately I lost my previous attempt, so here goes:
I do think there’s a very good point you’re making about the risks of allying with people who are ostensibly after the same end goals but for completely different reasons; but I think the differences between say, your position on firearms and one motivated by self-defence are smaller than between you and someone pro gun control. Ideological purity is a fractal and I don’t think it’s possible to agree 100% with any individual on policy or societal goals, but that doesn’t mean there’s not individuals with whom you agree more than others.
And while from your perspective the world where they rule, warts and all, is worth it for your own reasons from my perspective there are a lot of kids who will be mutilated by these people on this pyre. Just like many kids will die in school shootings for lack of gun control I have a hard bullet biting answer for it being worth it but I recognize I'm biting quite a bullet here.
I’m not American so the concept of the 2nd amendment or frequent school shootings is very foreign to me, but I admire the fact that you don’t brush them aside. I do understand the concerns with surgeries on minors, but the number is very low (56 genital surgeries between 2019-2021, 776 top surgeries) and my experience is that there is a significant amount of gatekeeping - I’m not sure about the US but in my country you need a gender identity disorder diagnosis + referral letters from two psychiatrists and that’s as an adult. Calling it “mutilation” is emotionally charged language that brings to mind violent traumatic maiming, when the end goal is a surgery that improves the patient’s life.
Let me see if I can pass the ideological turing test on your position and let me know where I fail:
Your attempt at the Turing test is mostly correct except for the comparison to a BID patient getting an arm amputated; no pro-trans rights person would make that point.
Firstly, the end goal of becoming an amputee vs becoming the opposite sex is very different; if done perfectly, the former will impair your daily functioning and makes you unable to do things the average healthy person can, while a perfect sex change wouldn’t - unless you want to argue that 50% of the population is somehow impaired compared to the other.
Current technology doesn’t give you a perfect sex change, but I don’t see how any of the modern treatments give you any impairments to your daily life, let alone any that are comparable to amputation. Fertility is the main thing that is impacted; but you can plan around it by freezing sperm or eggs beforehand (or by halting HRT - at least for MtFs, it’s possible to have normal sperm counts once T levels are back to normal). Fertility is also not relevant to your daily life in the same way having limbs is, and I personally wanted a vasectomy anyway which is something that’s available to cis men.
Let’s go step by step for each modern treatment;
-
You can go on HRT and have the hormone levels of the opposite sex, giving you some of their sexual secondary characteristics. The main thing you risk is loss of fertility, but it’s generally reversible at that stage. Otherwise, there are no changes that make your daily life worse than either the average man or woman.
-
If FtM, you can get top surgery. This is a cosmetic procedure but you will be unable to lactate after; this is desirable for many, as men don’t lactate. Larger breasts will have visible scars but this is a purely cosmetic feature once they’re healed.
-
Bottom surgery is more complex; the loss of fertility is permanent at that stage, and you have to remain on hormones for the rest of your life. But, if it goes well, you can have a healthy, fulfilling sexual life with genitals that you actually like, instead of ones that you can’t stand.
Also as a side note, did you know that there was a study in the mid-20th century on institutionalised patients that showed that castrated males lived on average up to 12 more years than intact males (depending on age of castration)? See also medieval eunuchs who had a considerably longer lifespan than their aristocratic peers. So a transfem patient could very well have a longer healthier life by going through the so-called “mutilation”. Personally if any procedure could give me an extra decade of life, I would heavily consider it.
rae
1yr ago
MtF/trans woman (and FtM/trans men) are the commonly used terms for the phenomenon. Are there any other terms that you can use that would be understood? Otherwise you can add it to the list of many terms like horseshoe crab (not actually a crab), peanuts (actually a legume), mincemeat pie (has no meat), etc. If you tried to call peanuts “pealegumes” people would just be confused, even if you’d be right.
All models are wrong, but some models are useful - FtM/MtF (and FtNB/MtNB) is a handy way to identify a trans person. With older folks or those less steeped in LGBT issues, “trans man” or “trans woman” often provoke confusion - sometimes they think a trans woman is an FtM and vice-versa, while the full “female to male” terminology makes it explicit that the person started off as female and now appears male, or is attempting to, even if their biological sex isn’t actually male.
I didn't mean overlap in the athletes (unless you're comparing modern-day female athletes to early 20th century male ones) but the general athletic level of the population. As for the arm wrestling, I was beaten by a highly athletic female classmate, and then it was a challenge against one that wasn't particularly athletic as far as I know, not petite but fairly average build, perhaps top third to top 50%. There's a possibility I have mild endocrine issues, I have signs of low prenatal androgen exposure (and paradoxically high T levels despite low masculinisation, suggesting some compensation for lowered androgen sensitivity).
Which is another reason that I'm favouring the hypothesis that endocrine disruption is responsible for the surge in transgender identification, and that the focus should be on that rather than nebulous concepts of gender identity, along with waging the culture war over what should be purely a medical issue.
I sort always had the implicit assumption that much of the culture war aspect of the issue comes down to the elite levels. It's not clear to me that the local D level rec-league shouldn't just be an open league. For individual sports no one cares if you win the novice, 35-40 yr old, 65-70 kg, nearsighted division of your local park run. Like if it matters to someone, anyone can find a "competition" where they hand our participation trophies.
Most of the attention is on elite levels sure, but the laws in Kansas block transgender girls from playing in public school and college sports, which as far as I know aren't elite. The culture war debate extends to the trans girl that wants to play on her high school soccer team as well as the top echelons of women's sports, although in both cases the number of trans athletes is still extremely low.
rae
1yr ago
At the risk of getting bogged down in semantics, the "in every single case" clause in KMC's comments was what made me raise an eyebrow - while sure male puberty (or EPO) is a competitive advantage, the way it was phrased could be interpreted ambiguously as meaning people who went through male puberty are at an advantage by always being bigger and stronger while female athletes can have superior technique/training - see KMC's subsequent comment. Best to clarify to avoid a potential motte and bailey.
rae
4mo ago
That picture shows Buck next to Laverne Cox who’s quite tall and wearing heels, he’s actually the average height for a cis man in many countries at around 5’9. I personally wouldn’t use Buck Angel as the go-to trans man because he’s turned into a proto-TERF himself strangely enough, and far more physically impressive trans men absolutely exist, see Mitch Harrison who can stand next to the Rock and is 6’3 and is quite muscular.
How are you supposed to enforce sex-segregated bathrooms anyhow? Should you pepper spray anyone who you think doesn’t belong, like what happened to this tall biological female thinking they were in the presence of a biological male?
The sources I’ve looked up show no link between gender inclusive bathroom policies and crime rates, but if you have any that contradict that, feel free to share.
rae
1yr ago
One of those truths is someone who went through male puberty will always, in every single case, have a competitive advantage over a woman.
Are you saying that every single person who went through male puberty can beat any woman, including top-level female athlete? That would be blatantly false. Obviously the average male beats the average female, and top-level male beats top-level females, but a top-level female will beat the average male. See average mile run times: 6:30 for top 1% of males, 7:48 for top 1% of females, 8:18 for top 50% of males, 9:51 for top 50% of females. Interestingly enough, the female mile run record is 4:12.33 while the male world record from 1913 was 4:14.4 - the advantages of modern nutrition, sports science etc. can outweigh male puberty without it.
The extreme of rightist gender essentialism is just as wrong as leftist blank slatism, humans aren't that sexually dimorphic a species that you can make such blanket absolute statements. Personally, I went through male puberty, but in high school the female athletes routinely trounced me in every sport or measure of physical fitness. In phys ed I even remember having to play with the girls because I had 0 chance with the boys. This is despite me working out a decent amount - I just didn't have the bone structure or metabolism the other teen boys did.
Unfortunately vocal anti-trans activists are just as bad as the vocal trans activists you described. A relatively moderate trans medicalist perspective as you described would be just as vilified by either side.
Also, I’m not necessarily in favour of strict gatekeeping of trans identity when it comes to medical treatment, especially for adults, for the same reasons I’m not in favour of strict gatekeeping for ADHD. You’re incentivising whoever is most motivated to get through the gatekeepers, and those aren’t necessarily the ones that would benefit the most from the treatment. See this excellent post by Scott Alexander.
Although in the case of the trans activists you mentioned, it wouldn’t be a problem as they’re not interested in medically transitioning at all, so removing gatekeeping when it comes to HRT and surgery would have no effect on them. If you’re not actually dysphoric and pursue transition, it will give you reverse gender dysphoria - so having the gatekeeping be the medical treatment itself is self-correcting to some extent.
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